DNC chair and an ‘extreme view of life’

Oh, the irony. We’re talking about a ‘personhood amendment.’

We’re at the point in Orwellian politics and culture at which states are taking legislative measures to define and protect basic truths. Ones we all knew until about the seventies.

That they have to go to such lengths is one signpost of where we are on the path of common sense and ancient wisdom. That political powerbrokers are condemning these actions as “extreme and radical“…speaks for itself.

The chair of the national Democratic Party has issued a statement on a vote taking place next week in Mississippi on an amendment saying human life begins at conception or fertilization. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democratic congresswoman chosen by President Barack Obama to head the party, called making such a statement “an extreme and radical step,” according to a new CNS News report.

“For the vast majority of Americans, including people on both sides of the abortion issue, this is an extreme and radical step,” she told reporters on a conference call and adding that it is supposedly a “divisive, dangerous, and destructive” attack on women.

“To American women, their reproductive health and choice is an intensely personal and private issue between themselves, their families, and their doctors,” the DNC chairwoman said…

“Now,” she said, according to CNS News, “the effort by the far right [is] to pass these so-called personhood amendments–divisive, dangerous, and destructive laws which would cripple a woman’s right to choose, limit access to birth control, and put the lives of women with difficult pregnancies at risk.”

What to say…

References to the “far right” would be more acceptable or contextual if there were as relatively frequent references to the far left. Is Wasserman Schultz merely ‘left’, or ‘far left’, or does that distinction matter? Why is the personhood amendment “so-called”? Presumably, that means she would call it something else. And the rest of that statement….it’s a smokescreen argument to deflect attention from unlimited access to abortion on demand.

Nonetheless, the personhood amendment failed in Mississippi.

Mississippi voters Tuesday defeated a ballot initiative that would’ve declared life begins at fertilization, a proposal that supporters sought in the Bible Belt state as a way to prompt a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide.

Note the language of this report, starting with a ballot initiative that would have ‘declared life begins at fertilization’, as if it’s up to voters to decide a biological fact. Note also the location of supporters in the Bible Belt state, challenging “abortion rights nationwide.” Cue the reader…

The so-called “personhood” initiative  [“so-called” is a popular diminutive] was rejected by more than 55 percent of voters, falling far short of the threshold needed for it to be enacted. If it had passed, it was virtually assured of drawing legal challenges because it conflicts with the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion. Supporters of the initiative wanted to provoke a lawsuit to challenge the landmark ruling.

Which should happen, since many prominent legal experts have such a low opinion of the Roe decision as bad law in the first place. Pro-choice legal experts.

While we’re parsing words, like ‘choice’ and ‘left’ and ‘right’ and ‘women’s health’…there’s more.

Recent news stories about the new vitality of the antiabortion movement and its legislative achievements – more than a dozen states enacting record numbers of abortion restrictions this year – have glossed over one crucial fact. The most visible, entrepreneurial and passionate advocates for the rights of the unborn (as they would put it) are women. More to the point: They are youngish Christian working mothers with children at home…

Now these leaders are taking the word “choice” away from the left. Their choice, they’re saying through example, is to have the children and work it out.

Abortion rights activists, take note.

Good point. They’re reminding us that ‘choice’ means there is more than one option, after all.